The opening shots have been fired in a looming battle between the US air transport and general aviation industries over who uses and who pays for the airspace system. The finger on the trigger was that of the major airlines, and the target in their sights was the emerging very-light jet (VLJ) sector.
Testifying before Congress in mid-November, US Air Transport Association (ATA) vice-president, operations and safety, Basil Barimo said the possibility of thousands of VLJs sharing airspace with large commercial jets raises questions about pilot training, maintenance standards and safety oversight for this new class of aircraft.
Barimo also called on Congress to “ensure the VLJ sector pays its fair share” of the US Federal Aviation Administration’s costs of providing air traffic services and safety oversight. To the GA industry, this makes the ATA’s attack on VLJs just the opening volley in a long-expected battle with the airlines over the introduction of airspace user fees.
The very-light jet (VLJ) sector finds itself at the centre of a brewing storm over US Federal Aviation Administration funding, user fees, and airport and airspace capacity because of the potential for thousands of these aircraft to enter private, corporate and air-taxi service over the next decade, placing unprecedented demands on an already-creaking aviation system in need of modernisation.
ATA is not the first to raise concerns about the impact of a VLJ market that is forecast by the FAA itself to total 4,500 aircraft by 2016. Earlier this year, Eurocontrol raised the spectre of thousands of light jets creating logjams in controlled airspace (Flight International, 15-21 February). What gave Barimo’s Congressional testimony extra impact was his questioning whether current FAA regulations and resources will be adequate to ensure the safety of VLJs.
“We have been expecting this, as we are heading for a perfect storm on FAA funding,” says Vern Raburn, the outspoken chief executive of leading VLJ developer Eclipse Aviation. “But if they think they can play the safety card, we will go head-to-head with them.”
Questions that must be addressed, Barimo told Congress, include how the FAA will ensure that VLJ pilots, particularly private pilots, obtain and maintain the skills needed to operate safely in commercial airspace (see box P12). He also questioned whether current pilot certification standards are appropriate for this new class of aircraft.
Raburn, who came out of the information technology industry to form Eclipse, agrees that current training for private and corporate pilots has deficiencies, but says training for the Eclipse 500 VLJ is modelled on that provided for airline pilots. “We are doing what the airlines have already done, and we are doing it with the best ATA training organisation – United Airlines,” he says. “If they think the training is deficient, then United is deficient. They are criticising one of their largest and safest members.”
The challenge faced by manufacturers is the expected range of experience of pilots buying and flying VLJs, from owner/fliers moving up from propeller-driven aircraft to ex-airline crews flying full time for air-taxi operators. “The GA industry has done a poor job of providing pilots with the opportunity and support for training, and type training for corporate pilots is somewhat deficient because it does not recognise the variability of experience,” says Raburn. As a result, the programme developed by United for Eclipse begins with a flight skills assessment in a full-motion simulator and, after receiving a type rating in the aircraft, most pilots will be required to fly with a mentor pilot to gain supervised operating experience. They will also receive regular recurrent training at United’s Denver centre.
Raburn believes the programme answers the airlines’ concerns about private pilots sharing airspace with commercial aircraft. “A checkbook type-rating will not fly with Eclipse,” he says. “We tell every customer that, if they are not up to the skill levels required, we will refund the price of the aircraft.” Raburn does not expect to make many refunds, because the training programme is designed to identify issues early in the course. “Then we will tell them to go get extra training,” he says. “We are not training pilots – we are training pilots to fly the Eclipse 500.”
‘Out of the box’
Fully two-thirds of Eclipse’s 2,300-plus orderbook is for air-taxi operators, who will employ their pilots, many of them expected to be ex-airline. The biggest of the announced orders is from DayJet for 239 aircraft to be delivered over 24 months, beginning around the middle of next year. DayJet was founded by another former IT industry executive, Ed Iacobucci, who has a similar “out-of-the-box” approach to the aviation business as Raburn. This extends to what DayJet plans for its pilots.
The company will sell “per-seat, on-demand” services between smaller cities within a region of the USA yet to be announced. DayJet plans to start small, with five or so Eclipses flying between two or three “DayPorts”, but expects to double the size of its fleet every three months, says Iacobucci – a projected growth rate that goes some way towards explaining why organisations such as ATA are concerned about the aviation system’s ability to cope with VLJs.
Each Eclipse will be flown by a two-person crew and the salaried pilots will work one of two daily shifts, leaving home and returning within the same day. Each pilot is likely to fly for 4-5h out of each 9h shift. This is dramatically different to the airlines, “where for 80h flying you can spend 250-300h away from home”, says vice-president of flight operations Don Osmundson, recently hired from regional carrier Comair.
DayJet also plans to pay its pilots well, by air-taxi and regional airline standards. “A regional first officer gets $20,000-30,000. We are looking at around $70,000,” says Osmundson. As a result, the company expects to attract fairly experienced pilots. “We are looking for pilots with 3,000h or more of turbine and multi-engine time,” he says. Their training will be similar to that performed by Southwest Airlines, renowned for its standardised procedures. “Like Southwest, every single pilot will be interchangeable. Standardisation is the key to safety – there is no substitute,” says Iacobucci.
“DayJet is trying to redefine the pilot experience,” says Raburn. He expects the quality of life offered by the air-taxi operator to attract many of the Vietnam-era pilots who will be required by FAA rules to retire from the airlines at age 60. “They are not ready to stop flying, or they can’t afford to because of the pension changes at the bankrupt carriers,” he says.
Pilot source
If the air-taxi concept takes off as he expects, Raburn believes this will stave off any pilot shortage for five to seven years. “In that time, we will have created a profession for pilots to go into.”
The ATA has also questioned the adequacy of maintenance standards and surveillance programmes for privately owned and air-taxi VLJs. Raburn dismisses these concerns, pointing out that the Eclipse 500’s built-in data-collection system will “capture data the airlines do not today. We will own that data, which is part of the maintenance system.”
The data-collection system will allow Eclipse to provide owners with an airline-style flight operations quality assurance programme, he says. “The results will be fed back into the training system. We are building a closed loop.”
Eclipse’s JetComplete nose-to-tail support system will also keep the company in day-to-day contact with its customers, through the provision of flight planning and dispatching services, as well as maintenance tracking and scheduling. “It will allow us to get information out to the fleet as rapidly as we can,” he says.
One advantage of DayJet’s operating concept, meanwhile, is that its aircraft will return to base at the end of each day, allowing the company to perform line maintenance. “It’s like a corporate flight-department model. We will have the aircraft every night where the crew is based,” says Iacobucci.
The scheduling software will also even out aircraft utilisation, and smooth the flow of aircraft through Eclipse’s maintenance centres for scheduled checks, “taking the peaks and troughs out despite the staggered deliveries”, says vice-president for maintenance Mark Reed, recently hired from NetJets, the largest fractional-ownership company with a fleet of more than 400 aircraft in a somewhat similar “random-access, on-demand” operation.
Barimo told Congress the USA’s air traffic services must be modernised and expanded to accommodate safely the 300% increase in demand by 2025 forecast by the the FAA, which expects much of that growth to be VLJs. Raburn agrees, but says: “Airspace congestion will come in two to three years without one VLJ being delivered. It will all happen with the airlines.” He also agrees the FAA must migrate to a satellite-based navigation and surveillance system.
“The congestion is not in en-route airspace, it is in the terminal areas. The airlines all want to take off and land at the same times, at the same airports,” Raburn says. “The airlines will saturate ATC, not GA – unless you change the technology, and then you will get so much airspace that it will take 50 years to saturate it.”
‘The big lie’
Raburn describes the argument that VLJs will take airspace away from the airlines as “the big lie”. Although the Eclipse can fly at 41,000ft (12,500m), it is expected to operate most often in the “mid to high 20s”, he says, as the typical trip will be a 550-750km (300-400nm) hop. “The best fuel speed is at 31,000ft, and our specific fuel consumption in the high 20s is better than turboprops,” he adds. This is below normal commercial jet cruise altitudes.
Air-taxi operators such as DayJet, meanwhile, are building their business models around taking customers from the highways and not the airlines. “To think that a passenger will get out of a first-class seat and into a VLJ misses the point,” says Raburn. “The air taxis will go where the airlines do not go, where there are no passengers now. They will land everywhere but where the airlines are.” Iacobucci agrees: “Our customer is not flying today – he or she is driving.”
Raburn believes the ATA’s decision to tell Congress of its concerns about VLJs is rooted in its lobbying for user fees to shift the burden of paying for the FAA on to general aviation. But the airlines are missing the point, he says. “The airlines will not recognise that we offer a tremendous opportunity for them to grow. We are not going to take passengers away; we are going to create passengers who will fly to get to the airlines. We are about the best thing that could happen to them.”
GRAHAM WARWICK / WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flight International
